Could the Northeast Burn Again?

After the region’s worst wildfires in decades, key state fire managers reevaluate a future climate defined by volatility.

The last time wildfire radically engulfed New England was in 1947. Deadly blazes ripped through Bar Harbor, Maine, and down the state’s coast. Fires raged for over a month, leaving thousands of people homeless and ravaging 220,000 acres. In its aftermath, all six New England states and New York banded together to form the Northeastern Forest Fire Protection Compact (NFFPC), which five Canadian provinces have since joined, to prevent future runaway blazes.

At the end of January, 135 members of the coalition gathered in South Portland, Maine, to discuss fire risk in the Northeast amid a new volatile time, mere months after drought and wildfires scarred part of its region and as Los Angeles wrestled with uncontrolled wildland-urban blazes.

“What was one of the best New England fall seasons for outdoor recreation really was the setting for a perfect storm for fire season…something we haven’t seen in a number of generations,” said Dave Celino, chief fire warden for Massachusetts’ Department of Conservation and Recreation.

“That was a wakeup call for the fire service in general, it was a reminder that history can repeat itself.” 

Drought This Fall

As months of record-low rainfall in most of the Northeast dried vegetation to a crisp, pockets of wildfire sparked in October and November: more than 200 acres of brush burned in the Lynn Woods, north of Boston, and on New Jersey’s border with New York, fire scorched 5,000 acres of land and took the life of one volunteer firefighter. To the east, a meadow burned in the middle of Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. In Connecticut, a longtime firefighter died when he was struck by a utility vehicle as he battled a large brush fire. 

The drought conditions were a surprise given the region’s long-term trend of higher rainfall, said Michael Rawlins, a climate scientist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and associate director of its Climate System Research Center. “What we experienced in fall 2024 was very, very anomalous,” he said. 

Climate models outline that as global temperature averages rise, there will be increased rainfall for the Northeast this decade and beyond. The region has already seen a 60 percent increase in days with extreme rainfall since 1958, according to data from the US Forest Service and NOAA. 

This year, NOAA’s seasonal drought outlook forecasts improving drought conditions by the end of April. But its precipitation tracker projections are less clear, falling somewhere between above-average wet and dry conditions, and offering little certainty or comfort to regional fire managers.

Part of what drives more intense rainfall is simple science. Warmer air holds more moisture. As global temperature averages increase, so does the atmosphere’s moisture-holding capacity. That explains the extreme deluges that parts of New England are experiencing.

But a “warmer atmosphere is a more thirsty atmosphere,” Rawlins said. More moisture evaporates from the land and waterways with warm temperatures. The thirstier atmosphere pulls moisture from leaf litter, twigs and soil across the forest floor, leaving behind a perfect fuel for fire. 

This was precisely the case in the fall of 2024. Massachusetts saw less than three-quarters of an inch of rain in September and warmer-than-average temperatures. “It was beautiful,” Celino said about the autumn months. “Any given weekend if you went to a state park it was packed with people. But the whole time all of those factors are continuously drying out the field and continually setting the stage.”

Leaf litter and organic material in soil dries out in drought conditions, and fire can burn through it and as deep as two feet into the ground. Celino said that drove the fire across Massachusetts, part of what he called a “historic event” that demanded a robust response not seen since 1947. Massachusetts experienced 663 fires in October and November when the monthly average usually falls between 15 and 20. By the end of the year, 4,600 acres had burned across the state, with 4,000 acres charred in less than 60 days. “That’s way off the charts,” Celino said. 

Because the state had no lightning storms in October or November, each fire was determined to be human-caused, Celino said.

“If you left a campfire going with any of those fine leaf litter fuels [like pine needles] around it, that fire was not going to go out on its own. It was going to burn through the organic layer of soil and escape and become a wildland fire, no doubt about it,” he said.

Since the fall of 2023, the state of Maine has required open burn permits for large campfires and brush pile burns to prevent human-caused fires from sparking into uncontrolled blazes. Whether the permits are issued depends on weather stations’ daily calculations for low to moderate wildfire risk. Terri Teller, a Maine forest ranger specialist, credits the program with reducing fires there, even as Maine experienced extreme drought conditions with the rest of New England.

Teller added that homeowners can play a pivotal role. They can clean gutters and “defensible space,” the 30 feet around a house, of dead vegetation, leaves or plants. 

Preparing for Volatility

At the NFFPC annual meeting in South Portland, fire managers reflected on how states and municipal managers can better prepare. Communication among firefighters and between states proved essential in containing blazes this year, Celino said. Crews can learn to be even more nimble in recognizing their limits on the ground and knowing when to ask for help, he said.

The coalition shared resources this autumn, including firefighters, engines and hoses, among Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New York. But states should review the costs of equipment sharing as extreme weather events increase, Celino said. “The lesson is that the state systems need to plan for that expense.”

Celino and his colleagues said they have a fresh appreciation for how quickly drought can sap an environment, and how crews must prepare. The fall fires were particularly challenging to municipal and volunteer crews, which are trained primarily to respond to structure fires rather than wildfires, Celino said.

“Boy, we need more training in wildland fire tactics and strategies for local responders,” he said. Teller said the forest service in Maine plans to increase wildfire training this spring.

The surprising drought is part of a shift towards more climate volatility that researchers explored in a paper published in Nature Reviews in January.

The authors of the journal article examined three-month swings in weather conditions that resulted in rapid drought and flood risks, using data reaching back to 1900. They calculated that the global averages of what they call “hydroclimate whiplash”—rapid swings between very wet and very dry conditions—had increased by 31 to 66 percent between 1975 and 2015. They forecast that such three-month swings could increase up to 113 percent under global climate warming of 3 degrees Celsius, which the world is on track to reach by the end of this century.

Rawlins, the University of Massachusetts climatologist, said the climate whiplash theory rests on observations that the jet stream is essentially becoming “stuck in place” as the pace of warming across the Arctic is faster than in the Earth’s mid-latitudes. “A wet period that used to be a week or so might stretch longer now, or a dry period may linger longer,” he said. What can follow are big swings from extremely wet to extremely dry.

Teller says navigating the volatility is tricky. “We’re not seeing more drought. It’s these alternating periods of drought and then rain,” she said. “I guess the lesson is just being flexible to realize that we may be having more of these extreme patterns.” 

Meteorologists are unsure what spring will bring given that NOAA’s tracker provides no clear trend for rain. Fire managers are riveted on questions of risk. 

This winter, across New England, only a slight snowpack has covered the ground. When or how early the snowpack recedes, how much vegetation will be uncovered and exposed to sunlight and when and how intensely spring rains might fall are questions for managers preparing for the next wildfire season.  

The ruin of 2024 is a memory and a warning to fire crews about little-understood volatility. “It makes us pay attention,” Celino said.

Cover photo:

Firefighters battle a brush fire inside Boxford State Forest in North Andover, Mass. on Nov. 18, 2024. Credit: Jessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe via Getty Images